Here is a good explanation for the difference between hypnotherapy and hypnosis by Jack Elias.

Hypnosis vs. Hypnotherapy

What is the difference between hypnosis and hypnotherapy? First of all, it helps to understand that the subconscious mind is like a machine in some respects. Using the techniques of Hypnosis, you can deliver an instruction to your subconscious such as "Don't smoke," and for a time you will stop smoking. However, we're not just machines: we're living beings motivated by needs. Bad habits are "bad" simply because they don't really meet the need they're trying to meet.

If you give your mind a hypnotic suggestion to stop a bad habit, you may succeed in stopping that behavior for a time, but the pressure of the unanswered need will eventually bring that bad habit back, or create another, equally troublesome problem to take its place.

Hypnotherapy combines the power of hypnosis and hypnotic suggestion with therapeutic understanding. Hypnotherapy helps you connect with your genuine need and design an effective strategy to fulfill that need. Your bad habit or life problem is like a dandelion in your yard.

Trying to solve it with hypnosis is like pulling off the top of the weed and leaving its roots in the ground. For a time, you won't see a dandelion in that spot on your lawn, but as the rain falls and the sun shines, that dandelion will grow back.

​Hypnotherapy is like digging out the weed by its root so that it will never grow back again.

This article by Diane Zimberoff and David Hartman of the Wellness institute is also very informative.

​Hypnosis is the process of getting a person relaxed and giving them suggestions that may or may not help them to get their desired results. They may stop smoking or lose weight or decrease their anxiety. However, these hypnotically suggested changes are often temporary, and this is one of the reasons that both hypnosis and hypnotherapy have gotten the reputation of not having long lasting results. These terms have been used interchangeably and they are two very different concepts.

What is Hypnosis?

A professional therapist can easily learn to put someone into hypnosis, but then the question becomes, “what do I do now?” Let’s take treating addictions. Most treatment facilities have a very low success rate. This is because they are treating a very complex issue with band-aids. They are treating addictions by only reaching the conscious mind, which comprises 10% of the individual’s total being. When we put someone into “a state of hypnosis” we now have the potential of going into the other 90% of the mind, the subconscious, to discover and treat the underlying addictive pattern. Just putting the person in the state of hypnosis and giving suggestions, however, does not resolve the deeper issues. It is more like a tourniquet than a band-aid, but it stillonly stops the bleeding for a short period of time.

Hypnotherapy Certification: The Clinical Difference

Hypnotherapy provides the skills to discover quite easily what the source of the addictive behavior is. Then, using the full 100% of the mind, you learn how to resolve the issues which have led to this destructive and often deadly behavior. Hypnotherapy training and certification can help free the client from toxic behaviors. Hypnotherapy will lead people toward healing the unresolved issues that have been hounding them their whole lives. We have learned to uproot the causes which have been feeding this hungry tiger within. Most people during childhood are faced with unpleasant situations and then draw subconscious conclusions about themselves from this very childish mind. We also make decisions about how to behave which seem good at the time, but now are defeating us. These childhood decisions are so deeply hidden that only through the depth of hypnotherapy, not hypnosis, can they be discovered and treated.

A hypnotist (not a hypnotherapist) will mainly use relaxation and hypnotic suggestions to address the behavior. The hypnotist may ask the person to associate a nasty, disgusting substance with the food or drug they are addicted to. This may work for a few days or weeks. However, if the compulsive eater, say, encounters a situation where someone they love deeply threatens to leave, they are immediately back to consuming their addictive substance of choice. The pattern itself of using substances (food, drugs, etc.) to medicate unpleasant feelings has not been changed or healed.

With hypnotherapy, you can regress the client to childhood, discover these patterns and change them deep within the unconscious mind. The new affirmations and suggestions will stick for more than just a few days. This is a fundamental reason why the mental health professional must discern the difference between hypnotherapy certification and hypnosis certification.

This video highlights the power of Heart Centered Hypnotherapy. Tanya Edwards MD past Director of the Cleveland Clinic's Integrative Medicine Program and Diane Zimberoff founder of the Wellness Institute and creator of the Heart Centered Hypnotherapy Approach share their thoughts on this powerful healing process.Glenda trained with the Wellness Institute in November 2000.

ON HYPNOTHERAPY

Your unconscious mind is where your creativity resides. It is where all of your memories are stored as images.

All of the cells in your body are effected by your pituitary gland. The pituitary hormones are controlled by the hypothalamus. This is the part of your brain thatregulates your heartbeat, temperature and blood pressure.

Your immune system is controlled by the messages it receives from the body, from both your conscious and unconscious mind.

What you tell your body influences how your immune system works. When you are depressed or filled with feelings of powerlessness and resentment your immune system can become compromised. As it receives a message of"giving up" you may experience powerful physical symptoms --like pain and fatigue.

Guided Imagery and Hypnotherapy are powerful ways to help you communicate and express repressed emotions and help you visualize changes in your thinking and feeling. Once you are truly present with your own feelings , you feel heard. Feeling truly heard enables you to let go and move on and give your body messages of empowerment and the motivation to heal. In the relaxed state of hypnosis and guided imagery, you are more receptive to new ideas and thought patterns. You are able to release negativity and move forward with greater clarity and calm--setting the stage in your body for deep healing.